The Novels of Ken Kesey
William David Sherman
Journal of American Studies August 1, 1971 DOI: 10.1017/s0021875800000761 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Cuckoo Vision Literature Art history Psychoanalysis Theology |
| Citations | 3 |
| Key points | Proposes that Kesey's novels are literary metaphors for the psychedelic experience, depicting ego disintegration, death, and rebirth akin to the LSD 'trip' and the 'Third Bardo' of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. |
Abstract
In their manual based upon The Tibetan Book of the Dead , Richard Alpert, Ralph Metzner and Timothy Leary discuss the signs of the ‘Third Bardo’ existence in a psychedelic experience in the vocabulary of Ken Kesey's fiction: Where Tibetans saw demons and beasts of prey, a Westerner may see impersonal machinery grinding, or depersonalizing and controlling devices of different futuristic varieties. Visions of world destruction and hallucinations of being engulfed by destructive powers, and sounds of the mind-controlling apparatus of the ‘ combine's fog machinery ’, of the gears which move. In his two novels, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion , Kesey has described that sense of the disintegration and death and ultimate rebirth of the ego which lies at the heart of the LSD ‘trip’. Both books are literary metaphors for psychedelic experiences.